Spalting Lumber

[customsawyer]

I just got a brain cramp. Really looking forward to the results.

[aigheadish]

Well, this is a fascinating experiment that already seems to be moving along quickly! Thanks for sharing!

I don't know a thing about spalting other than it looks cool, so I'm learning a lot. Your simple idea of heating pads is great! I'm currently trying to figure out how to keep some epoxy warm enough to cure over the course of 24 hours, heating pad may due the trick!

[JoshNZ]

I don't know a thing about spalting other than it looks cool, so I'm learning a lot. Your simple idea of heating pads is great! I'm currently trying to figure out how to keep some epoxy warm enough to cure over the course of 24 hours, heating pad may due the trick!

Ive put my workpiece on trestles with blocks each side of it then boards across the blocks, and draped a tarp over that all like a tent. Put a little space heater on low under the piece/between trestles and you can bring the temp up hugely, easy to overcook it even. Not very efficient but I've had epoxy pieces that need to get done before and that's how I've done it.

[Hilltop366]

 

[aigheadish]

Thanks JoshNZ, I'm sure I have a heater of some variety around that could accomplish that, and my project is a golf putter head, so quite small and should be workable.

[TWG]

I have the book, interesting read it will be fun to see how these turn out
 I spalted some sycamore, left sitting at the bottom of a wood pile for about 6 years, I thought it would be rotten. It was soft in a few spots but made some nice slabs. I will have to get some pics. 

[wesdor]

I took a class at Marc Adams School of Woodworking with Seri Robinson (author of the book). She is a wealth of knowledge and perhaps THE authority on Spalting in the world. 
If you are really interested in the topic I believe she teaches a course every summer at Marc Adams, located just south of Indianapolis.  We'll worth your time to get first hand information if you want to Spalt wood. BTW- as part of the course you get lots of inoculants and Petri dishes. 

[metalspinner]

Thanks, wesdor,  I'll check it out. 

Running the heating pads really helped to get the temp up in the big box. I just turned them on a few times a day. The pads have an auto shut off after 2 hours. 

Here is the display after a couple of days of not running the heating pads. I'm hoping I got the core of this wood up to within the ideal range. 



 

[Stephen1]

This will be great to come back to in July!

[D6c]

Now if he can patent a method to cultivate morel mushrooms he'll make his fortune....

[metalspinner]

Things are moving along, I guess. Every exposed board is covered with mycelium and every board is stuck to each other in one solid block. 😆



 

[jimbarry]

And here I thought sorting and putting them in a pile off to the side was a good idea.  ??? ;D


 

[aigheadish]

That's my method too Jim, but your pile is nicer looking. These are a pile of white birch (right?) that I just brought home a few weeks ago. I moved the big pile behind the barn. 



 

[jimbarry]

That's my method too Jim, but your pile is nicer looking. These are a pile of white birch (right?) that I just brought home a few weeks ago. I moved the big pile behind the barn.

White birch can produce some really nice spalting. 
This chunk of birch 


 
got sawed down into thin bits


 
to make bits like this 


 
and then sit air drying for a year or so


 
to produce little projects like this 


 
and this


 
It's always a treasure hunt for each log.  

[Walnut Beast]

Treasure indeed!!!

[moodnacreek]

I see here there are people who are doing or trying to do things I try very hard not to do.

[customsawyer]

I snickered at the last post, as I resembled it. For years I would push beyond tired if I had a maple log hit the yard. Just to make sure that it didn't grey stain on me. Always tried to saw them within 24 hours of hitting the yard. One day it didn't work like that and it took a month or so to get to it. The grey stained maple sold for more and faster than the white maple I had. It took 4 years to sell the last maple board that wasn't stained or spalted. Now I don't even saw them until they been on the yard for at least 6 months, maybe longer.

[aigheadish]

customsawyer- That makes me feel much better about my piles... Granted, I don't have a mill so I'll just go hit it with the chainsaw mill when I get the gumption but I've let stuff sit out there for a while. I've got nothing in any of it, really, so it it goes to rot it's no big deal, but it'd be cool to see it opened up with all kinds of interesting patterns and stuff. 

[moodnacreek]

These 'doing it wrong' specialties cause alot of trouble for me. People arrive with rotten logs [that where no good any how], branches from walnut take downs, crotches etc. I wish some of you guys that like this stuff where near by so i could send it to you.  Having this stuff in my yard can not be tolerated as it brings more of the same. If someone brings me a piece of a tree [that I can hardly dog] and i saw it for them someone will catch me doing it and go get more or the act will be photographed and put on face book. did I mention I hate smart phones?   Spalted  or half rotten wood also most times attracts the wrong customer.

[Larry]

I had a girl bring me a big ugly to live edge saw into table slabs.  While I was sawing she was making video content.  As usual when I got about half the slabs sawed I tilted the log up so the slabs slid off into the loading arms.  At that point I stopped and she got some great video of colorful and spalted slabs.  That night she put the video on FB and IG, of course she had about a gazillion followers.  I got all kinds of calls, texts, and IM's.  It would have been quite lucrative except for one thing......I would have to put up with customers!  I passed. :D

At 73, its lots more fun doing what I like to do, when I'm in the mood to do it.

[customsawyer]

It's kind of like the pecan that we slabbed at the project. I can't remember how long that log has been on my yard but it sure had some folks looking for a bottle of water to give it something to drink.
I don't like cutting lumber from firewood anymore than anyone else.

[YellowHammer]

I don't have any "wrong" customers as long as they show up with money and give it to me. ;D  
I don't have any "wrong" logs if they are sawable and sellable.  
Bills to pay, things to sell, I sell customers way they want to buy, not what I want to sell them.  The quicker they buy it, the faster I don't have to look at it anymore.

  

[caveman]

I'm probably going to unintentionally offend someone with what is coming.  This pertains to spalting to some degree but really to the rot and carpenter ant damage to cedar slabs and some red oak slabs, which for us are mainly laurel and water oaks.

A good bit of what we sell are live edged slabs.  Most of the folks who buy them find us on CL after reading an ad we try to keep posted.  There seems to be a direct correlation to the number of tattoos a customer has with the slabs that appeal to them.  We've had folks come up with tattooed eye lids and they just gravitate to the wood with what we'd consider has more defects.  The clear, nearly perfect slabs/wood does not typically interest them.

One woman, who became one of our best customers, until she moved out west, did a lot of wood burning and epoxy projects for customers of hers.  She was covered with tattoos, cussed like a pirate but she took and paid well for pieces that nearly hit the burn pile and turned them into items that others would pay good money for.

If the same things appealed to all of us, this life would be boring.

On another note, when we get sweetgum logs, we try to let them sit around until they spalt.  I'll occasionally go out and cut a thin cookie off of the ends of the logs looking for the ink line and to insure they have not gotten soft.  They seem to dry a lot flatter than sawing slabs from fresh sawn sweetgum logs.

[WDH]

Yes, sweetgum logs behave better if they age on the yard for 6 months or so. 

[YellowHammer]

There are two distinct type of customers we get, and we carry two distinct types of wood for the same species, to a degree.  One type is high quality lumber, and the other type is "high quality" and character grade, spalted, and cracked live edge slabs.

Here is an example, we have a pallet of 8/4 walnut live edge slabs right next to a pallet some of the best, straightest super premium 8/4 walnut in the country, either from us, Pennsylvania or Missouri.  This pallet is zero knot, 100% heartwood one face, hand faced dead flat, then run through our flattening planer.  The best of the best, or at least the best we can do.

The pallet of live edge slabs is right next to it, 3 feet away, is from knotty, hollow, even lighting struck trees, ones that "need" butterflies, epoxy, etc.  All our 8/4 walnut is priced the same per bdft, so price has no bearing on what the customer buys.  The cost of a live edge slab, based on bdft is generally in the $450 range, so buying one is a significant decision.

Our sales, week to week, of super premium 8/4 walnut boards almost exactly match the sales of 8/4 live edge, "character" slabs.  You'd probably spit coffee on your computer if I told you how many we sell every year, but just one customer last week, who owned a slab table business, bought 3 slabs for about $1500, and used the pallet of high grade walnut lumber as a place to stack them as he loaded them into his truck. :D

We do the same with hard and soft maple, poplar, and pine.